


Only Style

by beaubete



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), SPECTRE (2015), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Fashion Magazine AU, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-20
Updated: 2015-11-20
Packaged: 2018-05-02 14:10:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5251088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beaubete/pseuds/beaubete
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Q takes the job because it's a ridiculous fluff job with an even more ridiculous salary.  Things only get more bizarre from there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Only Style

**Author's Note:**

  * For [besanii](https://archiveofourown.org/users/besanii/gifts).



> Written as a commission for the wonderful Besanii! This one's based on an AU headcanons challenge I did a little while back; it was a blast!

The call comes in Thursday morning, just about the time when normal people are heading to lunch; the lump on the bed shuffles, and a pale arm snakes out, fishing for the phone vibrating on the nightstand.  Q flips back the duvet to peer at the screen.  He doesn’t recognise the number.

“Yes, hello?”  It’s not the most glamorous greeting.  Then again, there’s a fifty percent chance that it’s just Josef calling to needle him again; where an advanced degree in computer sciences and web design may have failed, there’s a booming industry in the drugs market—specifically pot, and Josef wants a dealer he thinks he can pay in blowjobs.  Q rolls his eyes just thinking about it.

“Oh, is it a bad time?  I’d thought you might be busy.  It’s only Mr Bond has some updates he wants done soon and I realised we hadn’t yet chosen the new computers guy, or at least we hadn’t called—are you at lunch?  I can come to you, if it’s more convenient.  We do need to move rather quickly.  That is to say right away, if you can spare the time.”  The man on the phone sounds vaguely harried, rushed and pushing, though still polite enough.  There’s a friendly sort of desperation in his voice.  “Say you have the time.  You were my favourite, and I really don’t want to do another round of interviews.”

“I’m...sorry?” Q says, because he wants to say yes, even though he has no idea what he’s agreeing to.  The man’s affability is powerful, even through the phone, and Q remembers distantly an interview he’d had last week, some fluff job with an obscene salary he’d applied for online after a visit from Josef.  There’d been a spliff involved, and some wounded feelings at the insinuation that men of Q’s field of interest were getting thick on the ground and that the reason he hadn’t been able to find a new job after becoming unemployed when Trash Bat went tits up was more a lack of appeal than a lack of skill.  “Is this Mr Tanner?  From the, er.”  And suddenly the name of the magazine zips out of his memory on strings; Q flounders for the name for a moment before Tanner blessedly cuts off his fumbling.

“Oh!  Didn’t I say?  Yes, Tanner, with Fash.  You’re Ave—”

“Q, yeah.  We met last week.”  He’s not trying to be rude, but the name on Tanner’s lips reminds him of a particular period of uni spent discovering boys and forgetting the little dweeb who’d locked himself in his room memorising Dungeons and Dragons books instead of masturbating like normal teens.  The rest of Tanner’s words filter in.  “You want me to—”

“Oh!  Yes, didn’t I say?  You’ve got the job, but only if you can get to the office in, probably, the next half hour or so.  I’ll have to brief you on the updates; we’ve been so busy with this month’s copy that I haven’t even thought—but then he talked about adding a balloon about the new site features to next month’s cover, and I thought, ‘Oh, fuck.’  So.  You’ve got the job, but only if you can be here before he gets back from lunch.  You’ll have to pretend you’ve been working on it for the last month, too, but I looked at some of your portfolio, and frankly, I think you can handle it.”

“Handle—?”

“We’ll talk about it when you get here.  You’ll be here soon, right?  Great.  See you then!”  Tanner’s off the line before Q can properly respond; he looks at the time on the phone—the entire conversation took under five minutes.  He could call back, entertains the thought for a moment, but the pay is too good and Q’s rent in the city too high.  He’s in Waltham Forest, out past the hipsters in higher rent walkups, an easy hour’s distance from Fash’s trendy Marylebone offices, even by train.  Black cab it is, then.

“Fuck,” he groans into his pillow with feeling.

::

“You want me to what.”  It is, perhaps, possible for Q’s voice to go flatter, more hollow, but he’s been looking for a position like this for months now, and now the only bite he gets is such obvious trolling that—

“It’s really not as dire as—” Tanner starts, face and voice hopeful, and Q has a horrible moment of understanding: Tanner is a layman.  He’s the kind of layman who knows just enough to get himself into trouble, perhaps thought this was the kind of work that he could bang out himself, or at least sweep under the rug.  The ridiculous salary makes a sickening sort of sense.  “Well, I just mean.”

“I.”  But Q doesn’t know where to go.  He searches for a moment, hands moving as if the words he’s looking for are already coming out.  He can’t find them, just: “No.”

“No?”  Tanner looks crestfallen.  “As in, ‘No, I don’t think it will be a problem’?  Or ‘No, I can definitely get it done’?”

“No,” Q tells him firmly.  “No, as in ‘No, I—’”

He’s cut off by an amused voice over his shoulder, “‘No, I did not intend to dress like this.  I fell into the closet blindfolded in the dark after swimming in glue, and now these hideous clothes can’t come off.’  Right?”

And he’s ready to be angry.  Q turns around fully expecting to be furious, except the arsehole is gorgeous, a brilliant example of fashionable masculinity so potent that even the testosterone wafting off of him makes Q’s mouth go dry, makes his knees wibble.  He hates him at first sight.  The man leans over to gently stroke Q’s chin until his mouth closes around a harsh gulp.  “Right?”  The man’s voice is somehow silkier around the amusement, and Q—Q leans against the desk a little harder.  Not in retreat, not in anything so crass as retreat, but he crosses his ankles casually and watches those icy blue eyes sparkle.  He’s so far beyond incredibly fucked by his sudden, crushing lust that it’s sent flowers and a card thanking him for a lovely evening.

“Mr Bond, sir,” Tanner says, and yes, of course he is.  Q has some hazy memory of seeing this man in one of his mum’s gossip rags, and his teeth click together around the tut of disapproval that’s forming.  “We’re just finalising the design for the new banner.  I—slate, you said?”  Tanner looks to Q and butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth, and Q needs the job, besides.  He only dithers a little before smiling at Mr Bond winningly.

“That’s right.  We’re covering your recent suggestions so I can work them into the redesign.  It’s looking quite handsome,” Q tells him, and he knows immediately that he’s made a friend in Tanner, whose relief is so palpable it’s like a balmy summer wind.  

Mr Bond’s smile is smooth, pleased.  “I can’t wait to see it—what’s your name?  I don’t think we’ve met before.  You’re new?”

Q’s proud that his own smile is only slightly strained.  “You wouldn’t have noticed me, I’m sure.  I’ve got a forgettable face, even if my wardrobe’s remarkably bad.  People call me Q.”

“Q.”  Mr Bond rolls the name around in his mouth like a boiled sweet.  He extends his hand, and Q takes it, yelping when Mr Bond yanks him close suddenly.  When he speaks again, there’s a hard edge to Mr Bond’s voice: “Q, if I were looking to have smoke blown up my arse, I’d hire prettier rent boys than you to do it.  I’ve no idea where Tanner’s dug you up, but he ought to have warned you at least that this is a fashion magazine.  We do actually have standards.  I’d send you home to try another outfit, but I’d hate to see what you’d try to come up with.  And if you decide to storm out in tears, don’t leave through the lobby—I wouldn’t want anyone to see you in that getup.”

Q’s frozen blood thaws in increments as Mr Bond stands back, impossibly smug and obviously pleased with himself.  He’s just about to stride off in self-assured victory when Q’s mouth unsticks just far enough for him to make a truly horrible decision: “He ought to have warned me I’d be working for a complete twat instead, I think.  Surely that’s information that’s more necessary?”  Only now he won’t be working for a complete twat because he’s gone and mouthed off to the boss—Tanner’d got that far in the explanation of the power dynamics of the magazine before Mr Bond had shown up: there’s Tanner over hiring and Mallory owns the magazine, but snug in the middle is Bond, in charge of every executive decision Mallory might be too busy to make as he flits between Fash and its sister magazines.  Bond is the chief editor, and Q’s just called him a twat.  Tanner stares at him in mute horror.

Bond’s grin is full of teeth.  Q’s sure he’s about to be told where to stuff it, and it must be some sort of record to have lost a job ten minutes in, but Bond’s laughter is bright, startling as he steps back.  “Perhaps you’ve got that right after all, Q.  Tanner, set him up with a back issue or two; the boffins are in the basement, after all, so I don’t think anyone will notice if he’s a little behind the trends.  Perhaps we can set up a collection for him where people can donate their out of season wardrobe?  I can’t imagine that little web-bat thing he used to do paid well enough for anything worth wearing.”

And.  And.  Q’s mind spins its wheels and Tanner’s patting him on the shoulder, congratulating him on making the most unexpected good impression ever, but Q’s still stuck: Bond read Trash Bat?  Did he—the website had been awful, just surprisingly awful, but inexplicably popular, and he’d worked hard but it had collapsed from the inside out as the content had failed and then dried up entirely.  Bond had—?

“—I really shouldn’t worry about it, if I were you.  He’s got the authority, but he doesn’t actually do much with it,” Tanner is saying, and he reaches out to give Q’s arm an awkward, reassuring pat.  “He might complain about your clothes now, but chances are you won’t even see him again.  Our last website guy told me he’d have forgot what Bond looked like if it weren’t for the Daily Mail; he’s usually only here long enough to pick up whichever secretary has been hired for him before going off for the weekend to some exotic location—Majorca was the last one, I think, and Tiffany came home all over sunburned.  Eve was jealous for a week.  You won’t have much interaction with him, is my point, and what messages he has for you will likely come filtered through me.”

“Good.”  And rarely before has Q meant it so much.

::

Q stares at the smooth, crisp wool in consternation.  “He doesn’t even have my sizes,” he tells the room at large.  By now, though, the other tech folks, Iain and Rhys—IT gremlins who maintain the magazine’s bevvy of tablets and PDAs and personal computers and treat him as some halfbreed born between the light and airy world of the magazine folk above and their little computery cave below—are used to both Bond’s vague sartorial harassment and Q’s admittedly whining response to it.  They don’t even roll their eyes anymore; it’s as though he may as well not exist.  He can’t even complain too loudly, honestly, about the suit that’s currently taking over his work station in its box, because he’s wearing the knit tie and cardigan Bond’s left him before—and yes, he knows that they are both actually a few seasons out of date because he reads the content he’s loading onto the website before he publishes it, but he knows just as well that they weren’t donated by his coworkers.  Ebay research on the cardigan alone had made his eyes cross and left him shaking at the thought of actually wearing something so valuable casually.  Bond’s taken to leaving classically styled but no longer cutting edge apparel on his desk like a cat with dead rats, if said rats came from shops on Oxford Street and had tiny labels that made him gasp each time he saw them.

And this train of thought is officially too weird, even for him, so Q bundles the suit briskly and moves it to a drawer where he can gaze lovingly at the impeccable seams later.  There’s a new homepage to complete, and he’s made a fair bit of headway; at this rate, they’ll even be able to keep the bubble advertising the newly redesigned site on the cover that Bond wants after all.  Apparently he’s made up months of work.  Tanner’s got a raise out of it, but Q hasn’t seen Bond again since that fateful first meeting, and so it’s mind boggling that the gifts have always been exactly the right size, as if—

No, he’s not going to dwell on the clothes.  He’s got a job to do, a job that he actually finds surprisingly fulfilling for all of Josef’s teasing last time they’d met up—and the very last, if Q has anything to say about it; there’s no “no homo” handjob in the world that makes up for being told you’ve only got your job because the boss thought he could My Fair Lady you into sucking his cock, and frankly the “no homo” part of the handjobs was beginning to grate to begin with.  They’d had a row and he’d stormed off only to stop a few blocks away at the memory of Bond accusing him of that sort of behaviour, so to prove the twat wrong he’d calmly walked the rest of the way before realising that he wasn’t even hurt, only angry he’d been spoken to like that.  So that was the end of the boyfriend in the closet, and he had to admire Bond a little for inspiring his eloquent exit.

He brushes his fingers across the front of the drawer with the suit in again and lets them tap out a tattoo on the metal.  He’s fidgety, unfocused; tea, then.  The boffins in the basement are a coffee sort, so he sneaks up a level or three—Tanner takes the time to find actual tea, and Q likes to slip him a couple of pounds a week to look away any time he’s in the executive breakroom where plebs like him are implicitly forbidden.  Q’s curled around his mug inhaling the floral-sharp fragrance of Tanner’s double bergamot earl grey when the lady comes in.

“Ooh, they’ve hired in.  Cute new meat, of course, though those shoes are unfortunate—plims won’t be back in for another two seasons, of course, so either you’re ahead of the trend or laughably behind.  They can lead the boffin to the fashion kool-aid, but they can’t make him drink, I see.”  Her voice is rich and smooth as hot chocolate, and she’s the kind of beautiful he’s only seen on the telly and in films.  Q wiggles his toes inside the plimsoles he’s had since sixth form and peers up at her.

“Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.”  It’s on his tongue before he has the presence of mind to wonder who she is and why she feels so secure coming into the executive breakroom as if she owns it.  Her laugh is heartier than he’d expect, if he’d thought about it.

“But Oscar didn’t have the internet, bless.  These days, fashion changes so fast my designs are old before I can get them made.  Much better, then, to find a muse and eternally design around him.”

“Eve, don’t go grabbing at the pretty office boys.  You know they can’t handle it.”  Bond’s laughter is dry and somehow warming, like a good martini, as he appears in the doorway.  There are two jackets over his arm.  “I like the grey’s cut but the blue’s colour,” he adds, lifting it.

“But he’s new and fresh.  I haven’t seen this one before,” the woman—Eve—says, pouting.  “And I keep telling you the blue isn’t going to be that colour when I make it for you.  You’re to tell me how you like the shoulders; the colour’s all wrong for you.”

“Isn’t,” Bond insists, and the wink he throws Q leaves him flummoxed.  “Q agrees with me, right?  The blue’s the better colour.”

“I wouldn’t—” Q demurs, and Eve grabs his hand, tugging until he has to put down his mug or spill it before coming over.  Bond holds up each jacket to his chest, wavering between each option for a few seconds before switching.  “I—yes.  The blue.”  It’s striking how clear the image comes to him; the grey colour’s nice, a pretty, bland shade that doesn’t warm or wash Bond’s features.  It’s commercial enough that on a sales floor, it would be an instant hit, but the blue— Eve starts to protest, but Q continues, “No, put it with—the white, his shirt, it’s misleading.  Put it with a blue like—”  He searches the room, but there’s nothing he can spy the right shade except, perhaps, the trim on his cardigan.  He’s got it off before he lets himself think better of it, folding the knit until the band of blue at the neck is at the edge; Bond doesn’t even flinch as Q opens the jacket and tucks his own jumper, still warm from his body, between the paler blue jacket and the white of Bond’s shirt.  The heat of Bond’s chest is trembling-warm beneath the back of his hand as he holds it there while Eve makes soft, approving sounds.

“You’re right, you know.  The blue colours, they’re nice together.  I couldn’t sell this piece that way—most people wouldn’t benefit from a powder blue suit, you know—but goodness, doesn’t that blue make something special of his eyes?”  Eve’s still humming to herself as she strips Bond of the jacket; Q’s newish jumper goes with her as she wanders out the door, still pondering the colour combination in a fit of inspiration.

It isn’t until he hears Bond tutting quietly that Q remembers the nasty ink stain in the pocket of his shirt that he’d been using the cardigan to cover up.  He flushes, crossing his arms over his chest—and the stain—peevishly, and Bond laughs still as he heads out to follow Eve.  He pauses in the doorway.  “Surely between the clothing and the formidable compensation you receive here, you can afford not to have to steal my tea, too?”

A hot flush sweeps over Q’s cheeks at that.  “I’ll bring the next box, then,” he suggests.

Bond’s smile is sardonic.  “Yes.  Your turn.”

::

It’s the eleventh hour, quite literally—the magazine will go off to print tonight and begin showing up in newsstands by the end of the week—and Q’s plugging in the final finishing touches on his mockup of the website when he gets the first error message.  And then a second, and then.

And then the site’s gone completely, down in a clatter of keys as Q’s stunned fingers land on the keyboard.  He’s still staring at the screen when his mobile starts ringing, and when he answers, it’s Bond’s brusque voice on the line: “Did you just fuck it up?”

Q is only slightly appalled, more furious that he can’t implement the changes he’s worked on so hard than at the implication that he might have caused this—Bond’s just uninformed, is all, and you can’t get angry at someone for being stupid unless they’re being obstinately so.  “No,” Q says back, and he can hear Bond breathing down the line for a moment before it goes dead.

He pings the site from his computer again—no go; it’s a blank white window as the page struggles to load—then tries his mobile—same result.  He’s checking on his tablet and idly sipping his tea when it sounds like someone outside decides to take a nap on their car horn; the high, droning wail of it is instantly piercing, and Q swears, sloshing his tea on the screen of the tablet before frantically rubbing it away with his shirt sleeve.  The horn is still groaning in the street, and it’s curiosity more than anything else that guides Q out, still in his pajamas and natty tee that he was planning for bed and his socks that have a hole in the left big toe.  The front step is still damp from an evening’s rain, and Bond is hanging out of, frankly, the most expensive car Q’s ever seen outside of films about secret agents and reruns of Top Gear.

“Finally.  Get in the car.”  Bond sounds even more vexed than he had on the phone, and for a moment, Q wonders if he’d chase him if he went back inside.

“What—?”

“Get,” Bond says slowly, pronouncing each word carefully.  “In.  The.  Car.”

“Bond, you’re disturbing my neighbours.”  He is; Q can see Mrs Randolph’s curlers tutting through her filmy lace curtains, and doors up and down the street are opening, curious and annoyed people trickling out into the street.  “At least stop depressing the horn, you lunatic.”

Bond looks sheepish for a moment, sitting back.  The car’s complaining horn cuts off sharply, a wounded animal finally shot.  Bond turns back to him.  “Get in the bloody car, Q.  Do it now.”

“Can I put on clothes, or—?”  He needs his keys, at least, before jaunting off into the city with London’s most eligible psychopath; Q steps back in his cold, wet socks, and Bond makes a move like he’s about to follow.  “No, I—!  At least let me lock my door so my cats don’t get stolen or something, christ.  We don’t all of us have doormen to keep the riffraff out.  Give me a mo’.”

It’s a compromise—Bond taps the horn when he’s mostly up the stairs again, but Q’s not going anywhere in disgusting socks, so he toes into his shoes and pulls on his dressing gown, shoving his keys in the pocket before hurrying out again.  Bond raises an eyebrow at him expectantly when he gets to the door, and Q grumbles to himself.  He gets in the car.

The drive to town is excruciating.  Bond is silent as they swerve, dodge, and weave their way into central London; for this time of night, the city is still surprisingly busy, with the added possibility that Bond’s going to cream a drunk uni student as they zip around corners into Marylebone.  Q swears he hears the tires squeal as they slide into Bond’s exclusive parking spot, and then he’s practically chasing Bond into the building as he strides ahead on long legs.  

Fash is a ghost town.  The lights flicker on overhead as Bond leads him in; motion-activated, they’ve been dark for hours.  There’s nothing beyond the faint hum of a computer left on, and certainly no signs of life.  When the lift kicks on, it’s with a bang that nearly jolts Q out of his skin.  They ride down in further silence.

Except there’s a coffee cup at one of the tech team’s stations, coffee cold but recent, and Bond sidles into the seat with a familiar air.  He powers on the screen to reveal the bevvy of warnings on the screen and gestures helplessly.  Q pulls over a chair.

“So what’s going on?” Q asks.

Bond’s smile curls at the edges with desperation.  “I have no idea.  I noticed the site was down—you said you were going to be finishing the redesign tonight, and I thought—” he trails off, more flustered than Q has ever seen him.  “Anyway,” Bond says, brusque, “I called Iain and Rhys, but they didn’t answer.”

“Iain and Rhys?  So I’m not your first resort for fixing this?” Q teases, and Bond just stares.  Oh god, Q thinks, he’s misjudged their relationship, shot wildly past ‘unprofessional’ and into ‘inappropriately flirty.’  He shuffles on his chair, turning to look at the screen.  He has no idea what he’s looking at, but so long as it’s not Bond….

The silence breaks.  “I was already halfway to your place by the time I called them.  Do you have to live in fucking English countryside?  I understand the appeal of a pastoral view, but—”

“Oh my god, Bond, if you think Walthamstow is the countryside, there is something ridiculously wrong with you.”  

“You live approximately four days’ drive by horseback from anything remotely fashionable,” Bond continues, and to Q he looks relieved, as though some weight is finally lifted from his shoulders.  The part of him that can’t help falling for straight men flutters in his throat, and he coughs to clear it away—hope is a ticklish beast, and there are more important games at play now.

“Anyway,” he tells Bond clearly.  Bond’s smug grin says he’s won, and Q won’t even fight him for it.  “What am I looking at?”

“I don’t know,” Bond confesses, suddenly business again.  “I got here to see what was wrong and Rhys’s station was making this noise, a klaxon sound, and I thought—shit, I can’t deal with this.  I don’t know enough, and who could come figure it out for me?  And then I thought: Q could.  You could.  You’ll fix it for me, right?  I have faith in you.”

It’s.  Well.  It’s almost overwhelming, how desperately he wants to do what Bond asks of him after that; there’s something open and almost vulnerable on Bond’s face, and Q’s already nodding and turning confidently to the screen before he remembers—he’s still got no clue what’s wrong.  Well, it’s time to improvise.

Bond knows a surprising number of passwords, considering that many view his leadership at Fash to be mainly as a figurehead.  Q’s worst fear is eased as he pulls the trackers and analytics on the site—it’s not a DDoS, and the knot of worry that’s been in his chest since he first saw Bond’s panicked face unclenches a little.  It’s not even a DoS; there’s no unusual spike of visitors to the Fash webspace because there just aren’t any visitors at all; the webserver’s turned off, and when Bond supplies the password, it’s wrong.

Or.  A sneaking suspicion builds in Q’s gut.  “You said you called Iain and Rhys, yeah?  Aren’t they meant to be on call for this kind of thing?  Like, if they knew I was working on updates, they’re meant to be around in case I fuck it all up and they have to restore from a backup, right?”

Bond pauses.  “Yes, that’s right,” he says carefully, then: “They came to me a week ago—well, came to Tanner, anyway—and warned me you might make mistakes, being new to the system.  I had them limit your ability to fuck up.”  It doesn’t even pinch.  He’s known he wasn’t popular with his fellow boffins, and it’s a neat set up job: to the uninitiated it could have easily been all Q’s fault, but Bond looks at him and Q knows that he knows better.  

It takes nothing to crack the password.  The hairiest part of it is the expression on Bond’s face when Q downloads the software from his dropbox onto the computer; it starts to spin possible combinations immediately, and then all there is to do is wait.  Q looks at Bond, an inch away from actually twiddling his thumbs.

“So it should be done by morning.  I think it goes without saying you’re going to want me to draft up a want ad when we’re done, am I right?” Q asks.  Bond’s lip twitches with wry humour.

“Oh, I rather thought you might handle it all, since you’ve done so well at it so far,” Bond says, laughing at the face Q pulls.  “Don’t you want to be King Boffin?”

“I’m pretty satisfied with the job I have, actually,” Q admits.  “I thought it was a weird fluff job at first, that I’d be working with flakes and lunatics and egocentric arseholes, but the longer I stay, the better I like it.”

“And the perks aren’t too bad, right?  Free, slightly unfashionable clothing and all the posh tea you can steal?” Bond says.  His eyes are warm, and Q laughs.

“You’ll have to take Tanner up on that one.  He told me it was his tea—I’ve been paying him a share for it for weeks now.”  And, “So it’s you, then?  With the clothes?  I suspected as much, but I never told you my sizes.”

“If I couldn’t figure out your size just by looking at you, I don’t deserve the degree I have in design,” Bond protests.  “It all fits properly, right?  I’ve noticed you wear the knits a little more often than everything else.  If it’s too small….”

“No,” Q tells him.  His smile feels wide, like it may stretch right off his face, and still somehow shy.  “No, it all fits perfectly.  I’ve never owned clothes so nice.”

“Well, that much is obvious,” Bond says, and for the first time Q sees the thing that others must see when they look at the two of them interacting.  His heart skips a beat and he ducks his face away, but his blush tells him out, he’s sure of it.  When he glances up, Bond’s eyes are serious and kind and so, so blue.  Bond reaches thick fingers out to lift the lapel of Q’s dressing gown, and suddenly Q feels underdressed for the first time since walking into the building two months ago.  “Is this the sort of thing you wear at home?” Bond asks.  The words are dry on Q’s lips; he nods.  “Well, that’s a pity.  We’ll have to find you something a little nicer there, too.  I didn’t mean to neglect a part of your wardrobe.”

“Well, you hadn’t seen my pajamas, so how could you know?” he asks, and then his lips are dry, too.  Bond’s eyes dip to them as Q wets them with the tip of his tongue, and—and they’re interrupted by the chime of a bell.  The password’s there on the screen, decoded and laid bare: “80nd!54tw4T”  Q snorts and types it into the field, and within only a few minutes, Fash is up and operational again.  In the windows, pale blue light is beginning to filter in.

“C’mon, then,” Bond says, offering his arm.  “I’ll drive you home.”

“Too bloody right.  The tube’d take forever and I’m not spending on a cab.”  Q nods definitively and Bond laughs.  On their way out, he pauses to update security about Rhys, and possibly Iain, and then Q’s sinking gratefully into the chilly leather seat of Bond’s ridiculous car.  The drive is silent again, but a peaceable silence as Bond watches the road and Q mulls over the night in his head.  They’re driving against the traffic, but even so the trip is a blur and Bond’s dropping him off at his door.  He’s even gracious enough to walk Q up to the door itself, and it’s only the little smirk tucked into his lip that breaks Q’s resolve.

Q ducks in to kiss him, a friendly kiss at the corner of the mouth, no different than he’d give a good mate, but his good mates don’t slide their arms around him, warm through the thin layers of cotton.  His good mates don’t trace at his face with the tips of their noses, don’t offer full lower lips for sucking at; when Bond pulls back, Q’s mouth feels swollen with surprise, and Bond doesn’t look much better.  Bond runs his fingertips under the lapel of his dressing gown again and steps back with a pat at his chest.

“I suppose I can offer you an extra day to finish up the updates, all things considered,” Bond offers, and Q squawks with outrage.  “We’ll launch a day late, is all.”

“You don’t have an IT team!” Q protests.

“But I have a very promising young go-getter in my web team.  He can handle it, I’m sure.  As for me, I’m thinking I might try taking you out tonight.  D’you like Thai?”  And for all the teasing, Bond looks a little shy, a little nervous.

“No.”  He says it just to make Bond flinch, but in the end he can’t keep it up.  “I’d rather do a Chinese, but not tonight.  I’ve got work, you see—my boss is a real slave driver.”

“Ah,” Bond says, and Q could melt from those dimples alone.  It’s completely unfair, he decides, and he’s considering bolting inside to hide.  Mrs Randolph’s curlers are barely hidden by the lace in the window.  “Perhaps tomorrow, then?”

And his hand is so warm on Q’s arm; his hopeful smile is so warm.  “Tomorrow, then,” Q agrees, against his better judgement.  Bond’s dimples grow deeper.

“Wear something nice,” he says, and.  Q knows just the thing.

 


End file.
